I don't see how an extra 6 energy for each SS while under AR/SB is going to stop you from being able to fill the globals. Also, am I wrong or didn't that change actually increase the value of the t15 4pc?

Either way, I don't see how they can think combat could feel right when you can generate cp faster than the UI updates sometimes.

I don't see how an extra 6 energy for each SS while under AR/SB is going to stop you from being able to fill the globals. Also, am I wrong or didn't that change actually increase the value of the t15 4pc?

Either way, I don't see how they can think combat could feel right when you can generate cp faster than the UI updates sometimes.

Think of it this way. Spending an extra 6 energy per global is the equivalent to allowing another 12 energy/sec regeneration during the cds. It's amplified by the shorter gcd. Still not enough though. (Note however, that I am NOT advocating a cost increase to sinister strike).

Think of it this way. Spending an extra 6 energy per global is the equivalent to allowing another 12 energy/sec regeneration during the cds. It's amplified by the shorter gcd. Still not enough though. (Note however, that I am NOT advocating a cost increase to sinister strike).

Yeah, but even if the rotation is very slightly energy negative while SB is also up, you don't start with 0 energy because you really don't want to start them until you are off gcd so you have at minimum 1 second of energy so ~15 energy (15.41 for me). Then using Feiry's napkin math he posted on the blizz forums:

During SB with T15 4pc 50 energy SS will be cost 30 energy. Evis costs -4 energy when you include relentless strikes. During SB combat generates 2.2 cps per SS so on average you will use 2.27 SS per evis, so a total of 3.37 GCDs costing 30+30+.27*30-4=61.4 energy per .5*3.27=1.635 seconds or 37.55 energy per second.

In my current assassination gear with around 10K haste, that is gear with mastery gemming and mixed haste and mastery reforging I can achieve a natural energy regen (no CP, no MG) of 29.5 energy per second as combat during AR+SB. During AR+SB the player will have 10% haste from raid buff, 40% from SnD, 20% from AR and 22% from gear for a total attack speed multiplier of 2.25. We can treat CP procs as 3 energy per 1.4 speed OH swing which means from CP procs a combat rogue with about 10K haste will gain (2.25/1.4)*3= 5.36 energy per second. Putting me just shy of the 37.55 energy per second needed to saturate the .5 second GCD. When you consider in practice most players won't hit the GCD exactly on .5 seconds due to latency and that I still haven't accounted for MG at a mere 10K haste a combat rogue will be able to saturate the GCD with 50 energy SS under AR+SB with T15 4pc.

Now I'm going to replace my natural energy regen with his so it is 30.82, also that 15 energy you start with is worth 1.25 energy a second over those 12 seconds and adding in his CP energy of 5.36 that sums to 37.43 when you need 37.55. So, as long as you dont start SB during a gcd (which is a bad idea regardless), you have enough energy to use something every global (this is also ignoring MG still).

Blizzard has absolutely no idea what they're doing when it comes to Combat. Every person in that thread is telling them that the upped cost is a big nerf to BG uptime and lower-geared rogues.

This is what's got me completely lost. The last time I saw math on the results, DPS for non-T15 4p was significantly lowered by the change, and very slightly increased by the change with the set bonus. How this translates to us preferring the T16 bonus is beyond me (specifically referring to: "We feel that, with the higher Sinister Strike energy cost in place, we can leave the Tier 15 4-piece as it is. It'll still be a good set bonus, but not quite as good as before, to the point that we don't think it'll have an adverse effect on Tier 16 balance.")

Instead, we're looking MORE dependent on the T15 bonus, unless something changed that I missed?

Honestly, at this point I almost think it would be best if they keep on believing that as them undervaluing it so much might make combat useful if they balance it assuming we don't use it. On the other hand, I'm not sure if I really want another tier of .5 sec gcd.

I get a feeling that since it's so late in the expansion that blizzard really is just going to slap band aid after band aid on combat and wait til 6.0 to make real changes to the spec. For instance I'm pretty sure they've turned the "screw it" eye to low level/new 90's and are just trying to focus on end game raiders in end game gear.

With that they're still saying that balancing/tuning hasn't happened yet so hopefully they're going to make some great adjustments and it'll all be snazzy. Trying to be optimistic here.

One thing that I saw is that messing around with gear on shadowcraft it showed that switching from a 3pc tier 15 to 4pc both at an average ilv of 530 and then somewhere around 550 or so that the dps upgrade was the same dps upgrade of about 11k dps according to shadowcraft. So, with 4 pieces of gear with a 31 point ilv increase the raw stats on t16 plus it's own 4 pc. set bonus very well might over come the 11k dps upgrade from the t15 4pc. So obviously if you for instance had a 4 pc. normal t15 you wouldn't switch out for t16 lfr but you probably would for t16 normal. Personally I would have thought that going from 530 to 550 the t15 4 pc would have scaled a lot better but according to shadowcraft it doesn't so if that trend carries over to scaling up to SoO ilv gear then blizzard could very well be correct and t16 will beat out t15 with the raw stats. But I'm just going from speculation and I very well might be wrong. Can't play with shadowcraft with SoO gear til it comes out so unless someone else knows a better way to check lemme know.

Also, don't forget that trinket. It works on KS too but you get 39% (or whatever it was) more use out of the t15 or t16 set bonuses, but obviously 39% more of a set bonus worth 3x (or quite possibly higher than that) more is a lot more valuable.

Also, don't forget that trinket. It works on KS too but you get 39% (or whatever it was) more use out of the t15 or t16 set bonuses, but obviously 39% more of a set bonus worth 3x (or quite possibly higher than that) more is a lot more valuable.

Was just going off of shadowcraft. I really hope that when the devs try and tune rogues they check both with t15 and with t16 and not just make assumptions and balance around t16. It'd be a really crappy design as well for them to realize that t15 is just too good and to then nerf the set bonus instead of fix combat to be better in t16.

Was just going off of shadowcraft. I really hope that when the devs try and tune rogues they check both with t15 and with t16 and not just make assumptions and balance around t16. It'd be a really crappy design as well for them to realize that t15 is just too good and to then nerf the set bonus instead of fix combat to be better in t16.

There's no way in hell they can balance both gear setups without nerfing t15. If they try to balance Combat's damage with t16 in mind, it's most likely that we'll see something similar to Assassination the first week of 3.3 when they changed Deadly Poison without nerfing damage elsewhere.

What I'm afraid of is that combat will be undertuned with t16 gear yet again this expansion, but they will nerf t15 mid tier without giving us compensation. Thats pretty pessimistic but I think my pessimism is warranted considering the attention we've gotten in MoP.

What I'm afraid of is that combat will be undertuned with t16 gear yet again this expansion, but they will nerf t15 mid tier without giving us compensation. Thats pretty pessimistic but I think my pessimism is warranted considering the attention we've gotten in MoP.

I'm sure they'll go full retard, they have a huge track record of not listening to anything the Rogue community says even when the problems are obvious.

Perhaps it's better if they completely screw it on 5.4, they might even try to fix things on 6.0 instead of calling it a day because they're "happy with Rogues".

They won't. That's how we got here. We told them that things were changing in the game and that rogues needed a small update, and they refused. Then they realized they were wrong and we got a band-aid. Then we told them again that we needed an update, they said we were wrong and we got another band-aid when they realize their mistake. They will never do anything but band-aid fix us, I've lost my faith in Blizzard.

I've played Combat from 1 to 90 on this new character. I'm by no means an amazing player and this is really my first time raiding in WoW. I played a Sub rogue a couple years ago and that was the main reason I went combat this time around. Not because I didn't enjoy sub, but I liked the feel of leveling with something new. My problem now is I'm not convinced my DPS is where it should be at. I'm confident that I am gem'd and reforged correctly and it makes me wonder how much of it is just a lack of skill on my part and how much of it is the spec itself. I've heard the combat suffers greatly from any downtime on the boss and I suspect that may be some of my problem in some cases.

Combat has "breakpoints". They're a lot harder to define than caster breakpoints that increase DoT tick times, but Combat gets better and better with gear, more than any other spec in the game. Gear increases the damage, your ability to use your moves to do damage, and reduces the time it takes to cooldown between those moves. Those three things together, in turn, reduce the cooldown on your major DPS cooldowns. The damage scale for Combat goes up much more than most other specs.

Combat has "breakpoints". They're a lot harder to define than caster breakpoints that increase DoT tick times, but Combat gets better and better with gear, more than any other spec in the game. Gear increases the damage, your ability to use your moves to do damage, and reduces the time it takes to cooldown between those moves. Those three things together, in turn, reduce the cooldown on your major DPS cooldowns. The damage scale for Combat goes up much more than most other specs.

Thats not actually true. Combat actually runs into a pretty major haste softcap around 10-13K haste depending on gear. A number of people saw it briefly at the beginning of the tier before they got RPPM items which propped up the value of haste but if you go into ShadowCraft and take away RPPM items you can see the falloff in haste value quite readily. Combat in fact has a really awkward negative feedback loop with respect to haste scaling, more haste leads to higher CD uptime but for the duration of those CDs haste becomes less valuable because the GCD is already saturated.